A collection of developer journals for the Battlefleet Gothic mod for Sins of a Solar Empire.
Bringing the Warhammer 40k universe to Sins
Published on December 8, 2008 By xthetenth In Sins Modding

The Battlefleet Gothic mod is now compatible with Entrenchment 1.041 as of 1/17/10, and has a new version (1.30) out as of 1/17/10


This mod contains the Imperial navy in a fully modelled state, and Chaos, the Tau and the Orks in a proxied state.

 

BE WARNED: THIS MOD IS STILL RATHER BETA AND IS MISSING MANY FEATURES, INCLUDING:

-A research tree (unlocks, colonization, fleet supply, cap ship crews and long range jumps are quite literally all that's there (well, there's a missile tech, but it doesn't do much, and you WILL be able to get late game ships early)

-GUI elements. some 2D icons aren't done yet, and the ones we have are a bit odd. They will be fixed eventually.

Things that we know about (IE we know about it and it's odd, but it's either a design decision which will be explained or something not implemented):

-Counter description text. It's wildly off and somewhat arbitrary, but the ship descriptions are pretty good and should give the player a decent idea of what to expect, and I'll write more on them on our forum (link here).

-Shield Mitigation. It's gone, but it says it's at 15%. Trust me, it's gone.

-The Emperor Battleship. As a compromise on its heavy dorsal armament that can be fired to either broadside, we made it have the strength of the dorsals and a broadside point forward, and slightly stronger broadsides. We think it works pretty well, but please tell us what you think.

-Chaos ships and tau ships in the Additional Races Compendium are odd. The chaos prow weapons are locked to fire left, so they can broadside well to one side without turning into brawlers and tau weapons are locked forwards so they can concentrate fire, but they lost their ability to fire at half strenth to the sides because multi-arc weapons are impossible in sins as far as I know.

-No stock sins races. GW wouldn't let us include them, and they have a very different gameplay mechanic anyway, and need a very different setup for damage types, much to my chagrin, seeing as I want to know how it'd end up .

 

Okay, now that that's out of the way, we can get to the fun stuff. The ships are working great. If you know the tabletop game you'll know the key things that I need to tell everybody else so they understand the game.

-Ships turn and fire SLOWLY. You need to think ahead, and you can fit in a lot of micro if you know what you're doing. This is intentional.

-Shields recharge VERY VERY VERY VERY FAST. This is a legacy of it being a tabletop game where focusing fire is a big achievement. Shields will fully recharge in the time it takes for you to fire a second salvo of your weapons. Firepower supremacy is big here, and so is using your weapons to their utmost. However, hulls repair rather slowly, so protect them.

-Ships will go up like popcorn, even caps if your fleets get big enough. A fully experienced cap has quite a bit of damage absorbing ability, but it isn't even close to invincible. They're about twice as valuable as a cruiser, and if you're careful, can absorb 3 times as much damage easily. It's a great bargain, but they will die, don't get attached to them.

-Oh right, cruisers. There are cruisers in this game, and frigates are now fragile scouts and flankers. Frigates are cheap, expendable, and surprisingly dangerous in numbers. Cruisers are a lot bigger, much tougher, and carry a good bit more firepower, but a really big price tag. Battleships come in on top, and are really durable, and host a lot of long ranged firepower.

-The weapons are different too. Weapons batteries and Lances are your basic weapons. Lances are focused beams of energy that do best against escorts (accuracy) and armored ships (penetration power, but with just the imperials that isn't that big an issue). Weapons batteries are massed guns that do best against battleships because they can actually be expected to hit a lot. They aren't that different, and the range and strength of the guns means more than their type. Torpedoes are great. They punch through shields 100% of the time, but tend to drop off against bigger targets, which boast the point defense turrets to shoot most of them down. They make great escort killers, and are your best weapon in smaller fights.

-Attack Craft (fighters and bombers) are also very different, they come in squadrons abstracted to one ship, and are much more fragile. They're also much more dangerous. They, like torpedoes pierce shields and can do a lot of damage, especially against smaller ships (including cruisers, battleships are nasty to them though). However, every ship has turrets that can kill them, but if they stagger their waves, they can hit home very hard. They also replenish quite fast until their parent ship runs out of antimatter, so they're really quite good. Fighters are quite capable at interception duties, if you have more fighters than the enemy, your bombers will be able to strike enemy ships while your ships are safe from enemies.

 

Please note!

-Planet capturing is quite different from in standard sins. The transport is your one stop shop for planetary warfare and colonization. They land troops instead of bombarding. The whole idea is a little bitcomplicated, and I encourage anybody who's interested to read the thread I'll post on our forum shortly. The short version is that you build transports, use their bombardment ability to pound your enemies into dust, and then return them to the munitorum depots (they have the advent antimatter recharger icon for now, shouldn't be hard to find on the screen) to refill. It should especially suit the Imperium's style of defend and counterattack.

 

Now that you know the basics of the game, you can download the mod here:

DOWNLOAD (7ZIP, 109 MB) (This should work properly but I've been having lots of problems with it, if not, please tell me so I can remove the link while I fix it. )

7zip or winrar both can open 7zip files, and both are available for free, and much smaller than 50 MB.

DOWNLOAD (ZIP, 162.63 MB)

And please visit our forum at Modcraft if you want to learn more about the mod and what to expect, volunteer or give detailed feedback:

OUR FORUM

 

Dev Journals: These guides will help you know what to expect in the future and understand the current state of the gameplay.

Dev Journal 1: Ships of the Imperium It explains all the imperial ships and their fleet's way of fighting. Should be useful.

Dev Journal 2: Fleet tactics of the Imperium It focuses on the use of the Imperial ships in a fleet. Definitely good food for thought, may apply more to tabletop than the mod, I need to test the theories some before I fully endorse them.

Gratuitous screenies:

Gothic class cruiser pummeling a dictator class cruiser

Gothic class cruisers pummeling a Dictator class cruiser with lances and torpedoes

 

Retribution class Battleship firing at an enemy cruiser

Retribution class battleship firing its prow lances and torpedoes at an enemy cruiser.

Finally, the trailer for the Imperium (thanks again, Thrawn!)

 


Comments (Page 44)
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on Dec 11, 2009

Hi all,

I have vista 64bit and Sins: Entrenchment v 1.041 and i have placed the mod into the mod folder and the game loads it up but when i go to play a game there are no textures or icons on the GUI and then i get the mini dump crash. Any ideas?

Cheers

on Dec 12, 2009

thecatsat, here is the instuctions to get the mod working

first off, make a folder called 'Mods-entrenchment v1.03',

move the mod into this folder,

download and extract my mod updater to a folder on your computer

run the sins mods updater.exe,

choose the mods-entrenchment v1.03 folder and double click on it, then click on the button labeled '1 set source to copy from'

then make sure that the destination IS  you mods-entrenchment v1.041 folder, then click on the button labeled '2. set destination to copy to'

then click on the button labeled '3 copy and update the entity files'

now wait while the mod updater copies and updates all the mods you have in your mods-entrenchment v1.03 folder into your mods-entrenchment v1.041 folder,

when the mod updater has finished click on the exit button, then start you entrenchment go to your mods selection screen, enable you copy of BFG and apply, then start a new game

hope this helps

harpo

 

on Dec 13, 2009

Thanks alot matey

on Dec 16, 2009

hi,

I just found this mod and have to say im really happy theres a 40k mod for sins! There seems to be alot of GREAT ideas floating around and I'm exited to see what comes up.

After getting the mod working and checking out the cool Imperial ships ^^ I have to say im confused, the mod seems less complete than what I thought from reading through a years worth of forum posts.

So just to clarify, and to make sure I'm not doing anything wrong, so far there is only Imperium, Chaos, Tau, and Ork, and while all Imperium ships are modelled, half of chaos, all except one of tau, and all of ork, are still large space-faring cubes? I ask because I was under the impression that there was more completed, and have to wonder whether im missing something or doing something wrong, indeed most of the ships included seem to be large space faring cubes.

Am I missing something? I just thought there was more done (not to be rude if there isnt ).

Otherwise this is an awesome idea and I cant wait to see all fully-rendered warhammer 40k races battle in an RTS space game

Also "The Rock" seems like a great idea for a space marine battlestation... some interesting ideas could be found there.

on Dec 19, 2009

Yeah, that's it. We ran out of money to buy our modeller cookies, so we haven't been getting many new models done. That and school has been a nigh-interminable miasma of suck for all of us.

on Dec 23, 2009

Recently updated SINS and now BFG mod doesn't work, have also tried reloading rel 4, rev 6 etc, many conversions of harpo's updater (thanks for the tools always needed). I now get mod to start but graphical menus/control elements missing from screen. Screen proprorttion also appears out of sorts.

Is there something I have not picked up on the updater or this thread. I sadly miss my BFG morev than my SINS. Have tried both standard and entrenchment games. Have updated/verified SINS install etc.

Any assistance to bring back the joys of the Imperium are apprewciated.

Pegasus

 

 

on Dec 24, 2009

Soooo.... if/when you guys update the mod, are you gonna fit in the other races as default too? I could never get the addon to work right.

on Dec 30, 2009

SINS Entrechment (BFG 1.2 rev 6) now works except for the following

Failed to convert '' to an enum value.
Failed to convert '' to an enum value.
Failed to convert '' to an enum value.

The above errors happen before game can load


IWeapon Mesh Point Data doesn't fit into any WeaponBanks.
IWeapon Mesh Point Data doesn't fit into any WeaponBanks.
IWeapon Mesh Point Data doesn't fit into any WeaponBanks.
IWeapon Mesh Point Data doesn't fit into any WeaponBanks.
IWeapon Mesh Point Data doesn't fit into any WeaponBanks.
IWeapon Mesh Point Data doesn't fit into any WeaponBanks.
IWeapon Mesh Point Data doesn't fit into any WeaponBanks.
IWeapon Mesh Point Data doesn't fit into any WeaponBanks.

These errors happen at start of loading bar and could be caused by the number of weapons points that are pointing the same way (>10) for models such as

Ammageddon - Weapon-2 x 18, Despoiler - Weapon-0 x 35, Emperor - Weapon-0 x 16, Ramilies - Weapon-0 x 12 Weapon-1 x 15 etc others are bin and not seen.

Also have added other research entity of psiantimatter and set prerequisite to 0, renamed deploystartbase to correct name for ramilies.

Have looked at other threads but cannot find solution for enum vale error and unable to fix weapon banks errors as unable to do meshes.

 

Anyone with any ideas.

Thankyou

 

 

 

 

on Jan 08, 2010

ok each time i start a new game the game loads fine but after it loads i can only see a very small portion of the hud and after about 30 seconds i get a mini dump

please help

on Jan 12, 2010

Okay, I'm back and am going to try to stay that way for a good long while. First priority is getting the mod working with the latest version of sins. Then I'll start sending cookies over to inert in return for models and see how much work I can get done before my classes turn nasty.

The updated version should be out within the week. I'll see how much testing I can get done on it, but all I can guarantee is trying it on my desktop and laptop, which are unfortunately both nvidia cards, but it's generally been enough.

I will be rolling the additional races pack into the main mod because I can't remember the setup I had to make it work and the point of making it seperate is gone now that everybody's got to dl a full copy anyway.

Pegasus, I'm pretty sure that those errors are expected screwups, I'll see if hand updating helps. I can't see anything that would actually be expected to lead to the error you're getting. If nothing else works, I'll remake the mod by hand, shouldn't be too bad, I've done it at least twice so far, but if that's the case, the mod'll take a little longer most likely.

on Jan 14, 2010

xthetenth

The errors meant that i'm just using the entrentchment developer and just adding each item to the bog standard entrenchment files to see issues etc and the clariify in myself what ammendments have to be made into which files.

I have used the converter to do all files i'm assessing into txt - have found issues with the meshes in that the negative zero values meant the weapons weren't displaying properly and abilities were not included so i'm adding it to the centre dummy point etc.

It's fun but like all things time not my biggest resource.

It's good to see the good work hasn't finished, looking at past ideas could we use from Sins Plus mod the idea of battlefield/ship graveyards to reflect the eternal battles etc.

Pegasus

 

 

on Jan 14, 2010

Ahh, okay, I kinda read that post from a get everything working perspective rather than a get everything working right one, since I don't think we've had a release yet that didn't throw a few errors. It's good to know exactly which files are throwing errors though. I may fix that soon, it really depends on whether the excess emitters actually work.

 

Right now, I've got it updated and tested every single ship for proper behavior ingame, next up I guess is testing them to make sure they behave properly in combat, and then testing the buildings and tech trees. After that I think I'll make an initial test version available to those of us with high bandwidth or a lot of patience while I see what I can do for gameplay changes and starting work on research trees. That and getting more textured chaos models done are my highest priorities right now.

on Jan 14, 2010

Well looks like I'm back as long as X is. Always need those beta testers

on Jan 15, 2010

Well, I've got the mod running fine, that's the good news. Problem is that either I'm a sucktastic qa department or the utility isn't perfect, cause some wierdness got into the files. Ships decided they could fire at fighters and the turrets turned off. Those problems are fixed, but I'm going to be putting some more time into making sure everything's right before I release the updated version and get to work on some stuff I want to do (research and the like) and see how quickly inert can make models.

on Jan 17, 2010

Newest version's up, should be working fine. Next up is tech tree work and getting more models.

Edit: don't use the 7zip link yet, filefront managed to screw it up somehow.

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